The chapter Introduction by Joseph Harris explains to the reader the concept of “rewriting” (Harris 2). Harris discusses this idea, and says there are three steps to rewriting: “drawing from, commenting on, adding to” (2) the work of others. While he uses his term to claim that all writing is technically rewriting, a good amount knowledge regarding rewriting can also lead to more effective critical reading. Readers can use rewriting to break pieces down into each of Harris’s three steps, and analyze each steps’ roots. Harris’s intended steps relate to writing, and each of them is effective in enhancing a piece. Drawing from a piece helps the writer provide the reader with background information, which is vital regarding the reader knowing what they are reading about. Commenting on the piece is when the writer provides his/her insight on what is being written about, and mostly about things above the surface of the piece and not heavy in-depth analysis. Adding to the piece is where the writer shows off an ability to critically read. This step is when whoever is analyzing the piece of writing creates their own ideas from what they read. Adding to a piece means underlying meanings are determined and analyzed by the writer, and is probably the most crucial step in rewriting. While these steps are defined from a writer’s point of view, they are more effectively used by readers.

Rewriting’s founder determines the method to be a certain practice writers use, and relates it to other common practices in life, such as ways of farming and gardening, interviewing and counseling, etc.: “A practice describes how the members of a particular craft or trade get their work done,” (3). Harris compares rewriting to farming practices, which means the general idea of rewriting is fairly versatile. While not commonly referred to by the exact term “rewriting,” many readers go through a similar process when reading, trying to identify certain steps followed throughout a piece that will help them better understand what they are reading. The value of rewriting to readers can be underestimated, as Harris designed it for writers. Harris reflects on how he is disappointed with some certain writers and pieces of writing, and how they neglect to recognize their methods as practices, and instead “… tend to alternate between offering advice that is specific but trivial…and exhortations that are as earnest as they are vague,” (3). This statement from Harris is somewhat hypocritical, as he neglected to mention in the chapter how much readers would benefit from his writing method. One must be able to identify the steps involved in rewriting to be capable of utilizing it as either a writer or a reader, but the reader can only use it if he has the ability to put himself in the shoes of the writer and try to follow the steps used. By following the path made by the writer’s rewriting, the reader will likely produce a much more effective critical analysis. 

In order to correctly perform rewriting, one must be aware of certain “moves” Harris mentions, and he alludes to a piece of writing called How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austin. Harris says that words are useless if they are not being used for a specific purpose: “… philosophers have long been overconcerned with decoding the precise meaning or truth value of various statements – a fixation that has blinded them from considering the routine yet complex ways in which people use words to get things done…” (Harris 3). He recognizes that Austin refers to this as words having “performatives.” These performatives must be developed by the writer, but the idea that words must get things done is in the favor of the reader. The reader is the one who the words must have a purpose to, or else he would quit reading the piece. The purpose of performatives is to entice the reader, and get him on track to start following the writer’s footsteps down the path of their rewriting. The first step of rewriting is to draw information from the piece, and Austin’s ideas fit in here perfectly. When drawing from the piece, the reader must be able to determine the author’s purpose of the piece to complete the rest of the steps. 

Harris writes about how he structures his books to fit his preferred form of rewriting perfectly. The rewriting structure he gives his pieces of writing can be taken advantage of by the readers of the piece as well as the writer its meant for, as both parties often attempt to identify the same steps. Introduction is the introduction chapter for Harris’s book, in which each chapter is named after a certain rewriting move: coming to terms, forwarding, countering, taking an approach, and revising. While these are the titles of the chapters, Harris is sure to let the reader know that this is not quite a required, set order of rewriting moves, and how working on any piece of writing can bring upon its own set of rewriting moves: “I am sure that as you work on different pieces, you will find yourself using these moves in varying ways and for shifting reasons – sometimes making several moves almost at once and other times focusing on a particular use of a text, sometimes making sustained use of a certain move and other times not employing it at all,” (Harris 4-5). This is similar to how readers can take different approaches when reading a story, from a rewriting stance to a stance where possibly no step identification is attempted at all. While Harris’s chapters are not chosen to show the reader a specific order that must be used, he does mention that they are strategically ordered, so that it is made clear that intellectual work will often begin and end in the reader recognizing how other perspectives can also be useful. As the reader, one must be able to view a piece from the author’s perspective in order to decipher the steps of rewriting as they are used throughout a writing. While viewing the writing from the writer’s perspective, the reader must also be able to supply his own thoughts and analysis when reading the piece. Harris refers to this idea of recognizing the strength of how other people look at the same piece of writing as “generous,” and says this should probably be done before getting too in depth with analysis: “And so I begin with what might be called generous aspects of working with texts before turning to more critical forms of rewriting,” (5). 

One of the big reasons Harris developed the idea of rewriting is this: most academic writing is done in response to someone else’s writing, or the writing someone else did in response to that original piece of writing: “In the academy you will often be asked to situate your thoughts about a text or an issue in relation to what others have written about it,” (Harris 1). Harris’s “rewriting” is most definitely an effective writing method, but can truly be put to just as good of use by those reading pieces written by people that employ strategies like Harris. Most, if not all, pieces can be rewritten using the rules Harris’s rules he explained early in the text: draw from, comment on, add to. The idea of rewriting is more or less a whole, broken down into different steps and moves that make a piece stick to tighter organization. This organization is crucial to the reader, which is why Harris’s method of rewriting is often more useful for the reader than the writer. 